Friday, October 13, 2006

What of Ataturk's Turkey?

First of all, congratulations to Orhan Pamuk on his Nobel Prize. I salute a man who dares to tell the truth with fiction. No, I have not read "Snow", but it is on my list (right after Jack London's "The Sea Wolf" and Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" - both of which I should have read 20 years ago, I know). Turkey is certainly in the crosshairs these days. They've always pulled mileage from the whole "East meets West" thing, but now... wow. Seems they are a thriving progressive secular country simultaneously teetering on the brink of a return to religious fundamentalism (sound familiar?). Talk about volatility. It is possible that Pamuk's exposé along with Chirac's passing of a law making it illegal in France to disavow the Armenian genocide will be the straws that break the back of Ataturks secular vision, that send Turkey it reeling back in time?

Which brings me to my real topic of curiosity today, a little something I call - The Conservative Enemy Generation Strategy. Is it too cynnical to suggest that conservative leaders willfully create enemies around the world in order to create clear tensions that require bold action? I mean if you happen to be a bible-believing head-of-state it's really a win-win approach...

Either... you get to pump up a handfull of two-bit despots into the cinematic likes of Auric Goldfinger or Ernst Stavro Blofeld and then go off and kick their evil little axises, all the while pulling domestic shenanigans under the cloak of war.

Or... those villains go nuts, get nuclear weapons, and blow the planet to smithereens. It's Armageddon!